Guild Wars 2

I wanted to see if a viable build could be created around the mesmer’s biggest strengths, boon ripping while still maintaining nice damage and support. Tall task to be sure. In my experimentation thus far, I came up with this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8al0npBtlqxKNcrNipxcyjiikB0QpLZ8FA-TJxHwAEeCAq2fAwFBQZZAA

The Harmonious Mantras trait swap has done some pretty cool things for mesmer PvP builds. As I was putting the build together, the benefits began to really shine:

• Massive boon ripping (Shattered Concentration, Null Field/Disenchanter, sword clones, GS#3)
• Decent support (Vigorous Revelation, Restorative Mantras) with AE stability on mantra of concentration
• Moderate interrupt/lockdown spice (GS#5, Magic Bullet, Signet of Domination, F3 Daze)

The idea is to play a shatter focused style, ripping boons like a normal shatter mesmer would, but you have halting strike for decent damage potential with the AE interrupts. Like many of you, I have a love/hate relationship with this trait, but in my testing I’ve turned more positively towards it. If you have higher crit chance (~50%), you’ll often crit HS and in this build for around 2k per interrupt. You also have a deceptive bleed damage source with sharper images and two bleed stacking phantasms which provide decent auxiliary damage.

For mantras, I really don’t want to go more than 2 because I don’t want to have to maintain more than that. I feel at least two are needed to make full use of harmonious mantras. I love the idea of 3 charges on mantra of concentration (stun break AND AE stability).

WHAT, no BI with all those interrupts?? I didn’t take bountiful interruption just to see what could be done here and that opens up the ability to spec into the inspiration line for all kinds of great support options. This is partly where I’m currently struggling with choices.

The areas I need some help with (if you feel so inclined) are the following:

• Inspiration adept trait: Depending on what direction I go for condition management, this could be Vigorous Revelation, glamour CD’s or mender’s purity. This is somewhat of a strength of the build, as before matches you can get the lay of the other team’s comp and switch this one out real quick. Bottom line is I’d really, really like to stick with vigorous revelation as it’s central to the shatter/support play style.

• Restorative Mantras: This gets decent usage from heal mantra and to a lesser extent, stability mantra, but I wonder if I’m getting enough out of it.

• Pack vs Lyssa: In this build you’re down right slow. I really want to take pack runes to help allies with the boon share proc and swiftness, but I lose out on extra condition management with lyssa. Lyssa provides cool synergy with harmonious mantras as well in the 3x heal for that random boon every 10s.

• Disenchanter vs Null Field. Given this is a shatter build, disenchanter seems not very well utilized. Null field seems like a much better choice to me. Both provide the same thing, condition management and boon share (albeit one with a significantly lower CD).

• Replacing dom signet with daze mantra. Oh soooo tempting, 3 more interrupts/HS damage but it’s another mantra (ugh)!

• Sigils: I’m currently going with energy and have tested rage due to the quickness on a fairly low 30s CD. I figured this could help with mantra charging and it does when it procs. That’s the issue, it doesn’t feel like I get quickness that often and seems a bit wasted. So I’m looking for something else.

I’d love any feedback on those items and anything else regarding the build. I think it has some potential but need some help!

Some thoughts:

I think null field is the right choice. It gets rid of everything at once (when you want stability to go, you want it to go now), where as the iDisenchanter just chips away at the boons. Also null field let’s you combo for chaos armor which I’m a fan of in squishier builds.

I’d defiantly go daze mantra for this build, sure its more channelling but you proc the aoe heal more often and you get more vulnerability stacks and more halting strike procs.

I wonder if staff might not be better than greatsword for this build too because of chaos storm. Also the extra up time on chaos armour probably helps make it safer for you to be close enough for your aoe heals to actually help.

Yeah I’m going to go with null field for now. The chaos armor combo is nice indeed for a squishier build.

I’ll give daze mantra a shot and see how irked I get trying to manage 3 mantras. But no doubt there, going with that potentially increases my build DPS nicely due to halting strike and brings my interrupt sources up to six with the three mantra charges.

The reason I went with signet of domination is due to the stun to help me land shatters. Being I don’t have IP I want to ensure I can land them for a good burst. Between magic bullet, iLeap/swap and the signet, I can do that almost every time.

Staff is an interesting suggestion, may have to play around with that too.

Also for now I’ve decided for now to go with fire or air sigil along with energy for more spike damage. I’m not sold on it though, any other suggestions?

Thanks for the feedback!

I would agree that daze mantra seems a little better for this build, but if you’re using MoC it’s going to be hard to manage sometimes. Also I really hate charging 3 mantras out of the gate. :p

For more supportive builds staff is usually the better choice, but you don’t really have anything that lowers phase retreats cd so I would run this build without it also.

For sigils I would run nullification or generosity. If you really want to strip boons hardcore, then nullification is perfect. Though it seems like this build is probably capable enough of that, so a little condi clear with generosity would work fine too.

Why rage sigil?
Maybe u can try sigil of nullification for more boon-ripping or that’s overkill?

Edited: nvm, you explained quite clearly why u used rage sigils, please excuse me for not reading thoroughly

Tried running daze mantra tonight and man I just can’t do it. Two mantras is the sweet spot with this build and it does pretty well. I took sigil of generosity and I think it’s decent but also falls prey to the proc when you don’t have any conditions and then you wait 10s for CD. It’s really quite unreliable but does it’s job for what it is I guess.

I thought to take sigil of nullification originally but yeah with the many boon ripping sources I decided not to. I was seriously considering frailty to increase my damage even more by stacking all the more vulnerability but in my testing I couldn’t ever keep up more than 3 stacks at a time with constant AA’s, so nope.

I’m testing runes of air and they work decently, providing swiftness and a really nice lightning strike on #6. Will keep experimenting with on-heal runes, but any other advice is welcome.

And yeah GS is used due primarily to mind stab (more boon ripping). Haven’t tried staff yet, having too much fun with GS.

Just a quite note. Rage sigils are a horrific choice. You can’t control when the quickness procs, and so the vast majority of the time you won’t be able to utilize it to actually charge a mantra. On top of that, your’e sacrificing any number of useful effects from sigils by taking those.

Good options include battle sigils for extra damage, doom sigils for extra pressure, ice sigils for some nice chill on crit, or really anything other than rage sigils.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Just a quite note. Rage sigils are a horrific choice. You can’t control when the quickness procs, and so the vast majority of the time you won’t be able to utilize it to actually charge a mantra. On top of that, your’e sacrificing any number of useful effects from sigils by taking those.

Good options include battle sigils for extra damage, doom sigils for extra pressure, ice sigils for some nice chill on crit, or really anything other than rage sigils.

Definitely, actually after my initial testing in the mists the rage sigils never even made it into a match:

skcamow.3527:

• Sigils: I’m currently going with energy and have tested rage due to the quickness on a fairly low 30s CD. I figured this could help with mantra charging and it does when it procs. That’s the issue, it doesn’t feel like I get quickness that often and seems a bit wasted. So I’m looking for something else.

So as of yesterday I was on with generosity sigils but don’t think they were doing much for me. I’ll probably try hydromancy or some of the others suggested.

On this topic, does anyone have experience using sigils of blood (or even leeching)? Thought maybe it would help provide yet more sustain with a decent chance of 500 healing every crit (5s CD), while dealing a small amount of damage. idk, battle or something is still probably better.

Also if anyone is interested in testing this out with me you’re more than welcome (hit me up in-game or whatever). It seems to be working out fairly well so far.

I wish the tooltip for Null Field wasn’t so blatantly misleading.

You could always replace phant fury with mantra mastery, which would only complement your mantras even more if you decided to swap out you dom sig for your daze mantra, but thats a pretty big plate to handle which you might have to swap out your heal for (since its not being used with menders purity).
Secondly staff over gs could be interesting since your runes suggest a bit of boon spread and staff would only complement that. Plus chaos storm while it can be unreliable would still replace gs #5 so your not losing an interrupt.

I’ll start by saying the stability mantra is good, but amazing with three charges

Thanks everyone for the feedback, I tried some of the suggestions.

Mantra Mastery – I noticed I wasn’t as effective overall, bringing people down slower. The very small gains in cooldown reduction seems less useful than the 70-ish % crit chance for my phantasm attacks, which is huge for my damage.

Being a shatter focused build, it’s vitally important for me to keep damage as high as possible due to the fact I don’t have illusionary persona or shatter cooldowns. Phantasmal Fury and Halting Strike are my ways to do that.

Daze Mantra – Suggested a few times, but at this point I think I’m stuck on signet of domination. It’s an incredibly powerful skill even on a long CD. Daze doesn’t immobilize and I need the stuns in this build to help land 3 clone MW’s and maximize my damage. If an opponent sees those shatters coming and dodges, I’ve lost a costly source of damage and have to wait the full untraited cooldown for it again. Between magic bullet, signet of dom and iLeap/Swap, I’m doing well landing my shatters for the most part.

Staff – Also suggested a few times and the only thing I’ve yet to try. Thing is, GS seems to fit this build perfectly, and I’m a bit concerned of the lessened damage output with staff. iWarlock is a bright spot, but his attack can be sketchy. I’ll definitely give it a shot though.

Runes/Sigils – Still experimenting here. I’ve now run Pack and Air. Air has to be my favorite due to the mobility, ferocity bonuses and lightning strike on #6 (moar damage). It’s great charging that heal mantra out of the gate to get a quick speed burst and getting swiftness in battle. Still, not 100% sold. For sigils, I tried blood and it’s decent. Will try some of the others.

I’m having a lot of fun with the build and it does the job, but I think there’s still untapped potential – need to flesh it out a bit more. Thanks for the ideas thus far – very helpful!

I guess I’m a bit late for the party.

skcamow.3527:

Mantra Mastery – I noticed I wasn’t as effective overall, bringing people down slower. The very small gains in cooldown reduction seems less useful than the 70-ish % crit chance for my phantasm attacks, which is huge for my damage.

Agree with you. Mantra Mastery is an aweful trait. One thing to consider, though: If you don’t feel the need for the Stun on Magic Bullet (because you still got the Signet if really needed), picking Sw/Sw and Blade Mastery might work well for your set up.

skcamow.3527:

Daze Mantra – Suggested a few times, but at this point I think I’m stuck on signet of domination. It’s an incredibly powerful skill even on a long CD. Daze doesn’t immobilize and I need the stuns in this build to help land 3 clone MW’s and maximize my damage.

Have you tried using the Daze Mantra but switching to Ether Feast instead of the Healing Mantra? This way you’d still be at 2 Mantras. I get that the stun is nice for landing the shatters but the Mantra just feels so much more useful especially when running Halting Strike.

I think that’s a good suggestion, I never got on with the heal mantra. Mind you I probably don’t use it to its best advantage where you need to start healing earlier than you would with ether feast. I always get disappointed by how much each charge heals for and the long channel is frustrating.

In the revised build wouldn’t you get more mileage if you dropped MoDistraction for MoPain and swapped Halting Strike with Empowered Illusions?

It seems like you’d get more damage from that and have a faster heal rate.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

In the revised build wouldn’t you get more mileage if you dropped MoDistraction for MoPain and swapped Halting Strike with Empowered Illusions?

It seems like you’d get more damage from that and have a faster heal rate.

Possibly, in fact QWho runs MoP but with MoD/Halting Strike. Adding MoP is going to add a big boost to heal support which I’m sure will be nice on point, plus add to my personal sustain.

Removing HS from the equation as you suggest leaves me with empowered illusions or mental torment. I’m leaning towards the latter since this is techincally a shatter build. I could still keep HS purely for Chos Storm, GS#5 and Diversion, which might be worth it. Thoughts on that?

While I try to figure that out, I’ll play around with this. Thinking sigil of force married with the 4% damage boost from ogre will be nice for mind wracks, mirror blade and GS AA’s. That said, I’m also thinking about trying to stick a sigil of intelligence on staff (instead of force) to get 3x MoP spikes.